From the fall of Siena on to the nineteenth century Italy
can scarcely be said to have existed at all except as a
geographical expression. Italians still ruled over certain
parts of the land, but they had the vices without the virtues
of their nation, and reigned more as the dependents of foreign
sovereigns than as independent princes. During the seventeenth,
the eighteenth, and the early part of the nineteenth centuries,
Italy was made the scene of wars in which her people had no
interest, and was divided by treaties which brought her no
good.[b]--HUNT.
[Sidenote: [1601-1700 A.D.]]
The general aspect of Italy, during the whole course of the seventeenth
century, remained unchanged by any signal revolution. The period which
had already elapsed between the extinction of national and civil
independence and the opening of the period before us had sufficed to
establish the permanency of the several despotic governments of the
peninsula, and to regulate the limits of their various states and
provinces. If we except some popular commotions in Naples and Sicily,
the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor had wholly ceased.
Servitude had become the heirloom of the people; and they bowed their
necks unresistingly and from habit to the grievous yoke which their
fathers had borne before them. Their tyrants, domestic and foreign,
revelled or slumbered on their thrones.
The Italian princes of the seventeenth century were more voluptuous and
effeminate, but perhaps less ferocious and sanguinary, than the ancient
Visconti, the Scala, the Carrara, the Gonzaga. But the condition of
their subjects was not the less degraded. Their sceptres had broken
every mouldering relic of freedom; and their dynasties, unmolested in
their seats, were left (we except that of Savoy) to that quiet and
gradual extinction which was insured by the progress of mental and
corporeal degeneracy--the hereditary consequences of slothful and bloated
intemperance. The seventeenth century, however, saw untroubled to its
close the reign of several ducal houses, which were to become extinct in
the following age.
[Sidenote: [1600-1627 A.D.]]
Compared with that of the preceding century, the history of Italy at
this period may appear less deeply tinged with national crime, and
humiliation, and misery; for the expiring throes of political vitality
had been followed by the stillness of death. But, as a distinguished
writer has well remarked, we should greatly err if, in observing that
history is little more than the record of human calamity, we should
conclude that the times over which it is silent are necessarily less
characterised by misfortune. History can seldom penetrate into the
recesses of society, can rarely observe the shipwreck of domestic peace
and the destruction of private virtue. The happiness and the wretchedness
of families equally escape its cognisance. But we know that, in the
country and in the times which now engage our attention, the frightful
corruption of manners and morality had sapped the most sacred relations
of life. The influence of the Spanish sovereignty over a great part
of the peninsula had made way for the introduction of many Castilian
prejudices; and these were fatally engrafted on the vices of a people
already too prone to licentious gallantry. The merchant-noble of the
Italian republics had been taught to see no degradation in commerce; and
some of the numerous members of his household were always engaged in
pursuits which increased the wealth and consequence of their family.
But the haughty cavalier of Spain viewed the exercise of such plebeian
industry with bitter contempt. The Spanish military inundated the
peninsula; and the growth of Spanish sentiment was encouraged by the
Italian princes. They induced their courtiers to withdraw their capital
from commerce, that they might invest it in estates, which descended to
their eldest sons, the representatives of their families; and the younger
branches of every noble house were condemned to patrician indolence,
poverty, and celibacy. It was to recompense these younger sons, thus
sacrificed to family pride, and forever debarred from forming matrimonial
connections, that the strange and demoralising office of the _cicisbeo_,
or _cavaliere servente_, was instituted: an office which, under the guise
of romantic politeness, and fostered by the dissolute example of the
Italian princes and their courts, thinly veiled the universal privilege
of adultery.
This pernicious and execrable fashion poisoned the sweet fountain of
domestic happiness and confidence at its sources. The wife was no longer
the intimate of her husband’s heart, the faithful partner of his joys and
cares. The eternal presence of the licensed paramour blasted his peace;
and the emotions of paternal love were converted into distracting doubts
or baleful indifference. The degraded parent, husband, son, fled from the
pollution which reigned within his own dwelling, himself to plunge into
a similar vortex of corruption. All the social ties were loosened: need
we demand of history if public happiness could reside in that land, where
private morality had perished.
GENERAL CONDITIONS
[Sidenote: [1600-1700 A.D.]]
In attempting to bring the unimportant fortunes of Italy during the
seventeenth century into a general point of view, we should find
considerable and needless difficulty. In the beginning of the century,
a quarrel between the popedom and Venice appeared likely to kindle a
general war in the peninsula; but the difference was terminated by
negotiation (1627).
Twenty years later, the disputed succession of the duchy of Mantua
created more lasting troubles, and involved all Lombardy in hostilities;
in which the imperialists, the Spaniards, the French, and the troops of
Savoy once more mingled on the ancient theatre of so many sanguinary
wars and calamitous devastations. But this uninteresting struggle, if
not marked by less cruelty and rapine towards the inhabitants of the
country, was pursued with less destructive vigour and activity than
in the preceding century; nor were the French arms attended by those
violent alternations of success and failure which had formerly inflicted
such woes upon the peninsula. From the epoch at which Henry IV excluded
himself from Italy by the Savoyard treaty, until the ambitious designs
of Cardinal Richelieu involved France in the support of the pretensions
of the Grisons over the Valtelline country against Spain, the French
standards had not been displayed beyond the Alps. But from the moment at
which the celebrated minister of Louis XIII engaged in this enterprise,
until the Peace of the Pyrenees, the incessant contest of the French and
Spanish monarchies, in which the dukes of Savoy and other Italian powers
variously embarked, was continually extended to the frontiers of Piedmont
and Lombardy.
The arms of the combatants, however, seldom penetrated beyond the
northern limits of Italy; and their rivalry, which held such a fatal
influence on the peace of other parts of the European continent, can
scarcely be said to have materially affected the national affairs of
the peninsula. Meanwhile, the few brief and petty internal hostilities
which arose and terminated among the Italian princes were of still less
general consequence and interest. The subsequent gigantic wars into which
Louis XIV, by his insatiable lust of conquest, forced the great powers of
Europe, were little felt in Italy until the close of the century--except
in the territories of the dukes of Savoy. Thus, altogether, instead of
endeavouring to trace the history of Italy during the seventeenth century
as one integral and undivided subject, it will be more convenient still
to consider the few important events in the contemporary annals of her
different provinces as really appertaining, without much connection, to
distinct and separate states.
The immediate dominion of the Spanish monarchy over great part of Italy
lasted during the whole of the seventeenth century. Naples, Sicily,
Milan, and Sardinia were exposed alike to the oppression of the Spanish
court, and to the inherent vices of its administration. Its grievous
exactions were rendered more ruinous by the injudicious and absurd manner
of their infliction; by the private rapacity of the viceroys, and the
peculation of their officers. Its despotism was aggravated by all the
wantonness of power, and all the contemptuous insolence of pride. But of
these four subject states, the last two, Milan and Sardinia, suffered
in silence; and except that the Lombard duchy was almost incessantly a
prey to warfare and ravages from which the insular kingdom was exempted,
a common obscurity and total dearth of all interest equally pervade
the annals of both. But the fortunes of the two kingdoms of Naples and
Sicily were more remarkable from the violent efforts of the people,
ill conducted and unsuccessful though these were, to shake off the
intolerable yoke of Spain.
The decline of the Spanish monarchy, which had already commenced
in the reign of Philip II, continued rapidly progressive under his
successors, the third and fourth Philip, and the feeble Charles II, so
the necessities of the Spanish government became more pressing, and its
demands more rapacious and exorbitant. Of the revenue of about 6,000,000
gold ducats, which the viceroys extorted from the kingdom, less than
1,500,000 covered the whole public charge, civil and military, of the
country; and after all their own embezzlements and those of their
subalterns, they sent yearly to Spain more than 4,000,000, no part
of which ever returned. Thus was the kingdom perpetually drained of
wealth, which nothing but the lavish abundance of nature in that most
fertile of regions could in any degree have renovated. But even the
luxuriant opulence of Naples could neither satisfy the avarice of the
court of Madrid, nor protect the people from misery and want under a
government whose impositions increased with the public exhaustion, and
were multiplied with equal infatuation and wickedness upon the common
necessaries of life. In this manner, duties were established upon flesh,
fish, oil, and even upon flour and bread; and the people found themselves
crushed under taxation, to pay the debts and to feed the armies of Spain.
Their wealth and their youth were alike drawn out of their country, in
quarrels altogether foreign to the national interests; in the unfortunate
and mismanaged wars in the Spanish court in Lombardy and Catalonia,
and in the Low Countries and Germany. Meanwhile, as during the last
century, the interior of the kingdom was almost always infested with
banditti, rendered daring and reckless of crime by their numbers and the
defenceless state of society; and so ill-guarded were the sea coasts that
the Turkish pirates made habitual descents during the whole course of
the century, ravaged the country, attacked villages and even cities, and
carried off the people into slavery.
[Illustration: WELL NEAR THE PIAZZA DEI SIGNORI, VERONA]
It cannot excite our surprise that the evils of the Spanish
administration filled the Neapolitans with discontent and indignation; we
may only wonder that any people could be found abject enough to submit to
a government at once so oppressive and feeble. The first decided attempt
to throw off the foreign yoke had its origin among an order in which such
a spirit might least be anticipated. In the last year of the sixteenth
century, Tommaso Campanella, a Dominican friar, had, on account, says
Giannone, of his wicked life and the suspicion of infidelity, incurred
the rigours of the Roman Inquisition. On his release he laboured, in
revenge for the treatment which he had received at Rome, to induce the
brethren of his own order, the Augustines, and the Franciscans, to excite
a religious and political revolution in Calabria. He acquired among
them the same reputation for sanctity and prophetic illumination which
Savonarola had gained at Florence a hundred years before. He secretly
inveighed against the Spanish tyranny; he declared that he was appointed
by the Almighty to overthrow it, and to establish a republic in its
place; and he succeeded in enlisting the monastic orders and several
bishops of Calabria in the cause. By their exhortations, a multitude of
people and banditti of the province were roused to second him, and his
design was embraced by great numbers of the provincial barons, whose
names the historian declares that he suppresses from regard to their
descendants. Campanella relied likewise on the assistance of the Turks in
the meditated insurrection. But the secret of so extensive a conspiracy
could not be preserved; the government got notice of it before it was
ripe for execution; and Campanella and his chief priestly associates,
with other conspirators, were adroitly arrested. Many of them were put to
death under circumstances of atrocious cruelty; but Campanella himself,
in the extremity of his torments, had the consummate address to render
his confession so perplexed and incoherent that he was regarded as a
madman, and sentenced only to perpetual imprisonment; from which he
contrived at length to escape. He fled to France, and peaceably ended his
life many years afterwards at Paris.
[Sidenote: [1600-1647 A.D.]]
After the suppression of this conspiracy, Naples was frequently agitated
at different intervals by commotions, into which the lower people
were driven by misery and want. These partial ebullitions of popular
discontent were not, however, marked by any very serious character until
the middle of the century, when the tyranny of the viceregal government
and the disorders and wretchedness of the kingdom reached their
consummation. The Spanish resources of taxation had been exhausted on the
ordinary articles of consumption; the poor of the capital and kingdom had
been successively compelled to forego the use of meat and bread by heavy
duties; and the abundant fruits of their happy climate remained almost
their sole means of support. The duke of Arcos, who was then viceroy,
could find no other expedient to meet the still craving demands of his
court upon a country already drained of its life-blood, than to impose a
tax upon this last supply of food; and his measure roused the famishing
people to desperation.
An accidental affray in the market of Naples swelled into a general
insurrection of the populace of the capital; and an obscure and bold
individual from the dregs of the people immediately rose to the head
of the insurgents. Tommaso Aniello, better known under the name of
Masaniello, a native of Amalfi and servant of a fisherman, had received
an affront from the officers of the customs and sought an occasion of
gratifying his lurking vengeance. Seizing the moment when the popular
exasperation was at its height, he led the rioters to the attack and
demolition of the custom-house. The flames of insurrection at once spread
with uncontrollable violence; the palace of the viceroy was pillaged; and
Arcos himself was driven for refuge to one of the castles of Naples. The
infuriated populace murdered many of the nobles, burned the houses of
all who were obnoxious to them, and filled the whole capital with flames
and blood. Their youthful idol Masaniello, tattered and half naked,
with a scaffold for his throne and the sword for his sceptre, commanded
everywhere with absolute sway.
The viceroy, terrified into virtue at these excesses, which the long
oppression of his court and his own tyranny had provoked, and finding
the insurrection spreading through the provinces, consented to all
the demands of Masaniello and his followers. By a treaty which he
concluded with the insurgents, he solemnly promised the repeal of all
the taxes imposed since the time of Charles V, and engaged that no
new duties should thenceforth be levied; he guaranteed the ancient
and long-violated privileges of parliament; and he bound himself by
oath to an act of oblivion. A short interval of calm was thus gained;
but the perfidious viceroy employed it only in gratifying the vanity
of Masaniello by caresses and entertainments; until, having caused a
potion to be administered to him in his wine at a banquet, he succeeded
in unsettling his reason. The demagogue then by his extravagances and
cruelties lost the affection of the people; and Arcos easily procured his
assassination by some of his own followers.
[Sidenote: [1647-1648 A.D.]]
The viceroy had no sooner thus deprived the people of their young
leader, whose native talents had rendered him truly formidable, than
he immediately showed a determination to break all the articles of his
compact. But the people, penetrating his treachery, flew again to arms;
and the insurrection burst forth in the capital and provinces with more
sanguinary fury than before. Again Arcos dissembled; and again the
deluded people had laid down their arms; when, on the appearance of a
Spanish fleet before Naples, the citadels and shipping suddenly opened a
tremendous cannonade on the city; and at the same moment some thousand
Spanish infantry disembarked and commenced a general massacre in the
streets. The Neapolitans were confounded and panic-stricken at the
aggravated perfidy; but they were a hundred times more numerous than the
handful of troops which assailed them. When they recovered from their
first consternation, they attacked their enemies in every street; and
after a frightful carnage on both sides, the Spaniards were driven either
into the fortresses or the sea.
After this conflict, the people, who, since the death of Masaniello,
had fallen under the influence of Gennaro Annese, a soldier of mean
birth, resolved fiercely and fearlessly to throw off the Spanish yoke
altogether. It chanced that Henry, duke of Guise, who by maternal descent
from the second line of Anjou had some hereditary pretensions to the
Neapolitan crown, was at this juncture at Rome on his private business;
and to him the insurgents applied, with the offer of constituting him
their captain-general. At the same time they resolved to erect Naples
into a republic under his presidency; and the duke, a high-spirited
prince, hastened to assume a command which opened so many glorious
prospects of ambition. The contest with the Spanish viceroy, his
fortresses, and squadron, was then resumed with new bloodshed, and with
indecisive results. But though the Neapolitans had hailed the name of a
republic with rapture, they were, of all people, by their inconsistency
and irresolution, least qualified for such a form of government. In this
insurrection, they had for some time professed obedience to the king of
Spain, while they were resisting his arms; and even now they wavered,
and were divided among themselves. On the one hand, the duke de Guise,
outraged by their excesses, and grasping perhaps at the establishment
of an arbitrary power in his own person, began to exercise an odious
authority, and showed himself intolerant of the influence of Annese: on
the other, that leader of the people was irritated at finding himself
deprived of all command. In his jealousy of Guise, he basely resolved
to betray his countrymen to the Spaniards; and in the temporary absence
of the duke, who had left the city with a small force to protect the
introduction of some supplies, he opened the gates to the enemy (1648
A.D.). When the Spanish troops re-entered the capital the abject
multitude received them with loud acclamations; and the duke of Guise
himself, in endeavouring to effect his flight, was made prisoner, and
sent to Spain. In one of those gloomy Spanish dungeons he was kept a
prisoner and mourned for some years the vanity of his ambition.
[Sidenote: [1648-1674 A.D.]]
Thus, in a few hours, was the Spanish yoke again fixed on the necks of
the prostrate Neapolitans; and it was riveted more firmly and grievously
than ever. As soon as their submission was secured, almost all the men
who had taken a prominent share in the insurrection, and who had been
promised pardon, were seized, and under various pretences of their having
mediated new troubles, were either publicly or privately executed. The
traitor Gennaro Annese himself shared the same fate--a worthy example
that neither the faith of oaths, nor the memory of eminent services
are securities against the jealousy and vengeance of despotism. That
despotism had no longer anything to fear from the degraded people who
had returned under its iron sceptre. The miseries of Naples could not
increase; but they were not diminished until the death of Charles II and
the extinction of the Austrian dynasty of Spain in the last year of the
century.
The sister kingdom of Sicily had long shared the lot of Naples, in all
the distresses which the tyrannical and impolitic government of Spain
could inflict upon the people. The Sicilians were only more fortunate
than their continental neighbours, as the inferior wealth and resources
of their island rendered them a less inviting prey to the insatiable
necessities of Spain, to the drain of her wars, and the rapacity of her
ministers. But even in Sicily, which by the excellence of its soil for
raising corn seems intended to be the granary of Italy, the Spanish
government succeeded in creating artificial dearth and squalid penury;
and in the natural seat of abundance, the people were often without bread
to eat. Their misery goaded them at length nearly to the commission of
the same excesses as those which have just been described at Naples. A
few months earlier than the revolt under Masaniello the lower orders rose
at Palermo, chose for their leader one Giuseppe d’Alessi, a person of as
low condition as the Neapolitan demagogue, and under his orders put their
viceroy, the marquis of los Velos, to flight. But this insurrection at
Palermo was less serious than that of Naples and, after passing through
similar stages, was more easily quelled. The Sicilian viceroy, like
Arcos, did not scruple at premeditated violation of the solemnity of
oaths. Like him, he swore to grant the people all their demands, and a
total amnesty; and yet, after perfidiously obtaining the assassination of
the popular leader, he caused the inhabitants to be slaughtered in the
streets, their chiefs to be hanged, and the burdens which he had been
forced to remove to be laid on again.
This detestable admixture of perfidy and sanguinary violence bent
the spirit of the Palermitans to the yoke, and Sicily relapsed into
the tameness of suffering for above twenty-seven years; until this
tranquillity was broken, during the general war in Europe, which preceded
the Treaty of Nimeguen, by a new and more dangerous insurrection.
The city of Messina had, until this epoch, in some measure enjoyed a
republican constitution and was governed by a senate of its own, under
the presidency only of a Spanish lieutenant, with very limited powers.
This freedom of the city had insured its prosperity: its population
amounted to sixty thousand souls, its commerce flourished, and its wealth
rivalled the dreams of avarice. The Neapolitan historian asserts that
the privileges of the people had rendered them insolent; but there is
more reason to believe that the Spanish government looked with a jealous
and unfriendly eye upon a happy independence, which was calculated
to fill their other Sicilian subjects with bitter repinings at the
gloomy contrast of their own wretched slavery. Several differences with
successive viceroys regarding their privileges had inspired the citizens
of Messina with discontent; and at length they rose in open rebellion
against their Spanish governor, Don Diego de Soria, and expelled him
from the city (1674 A.D.). Despairing of defending their rights, without
assistance, against the whole power of the Spanish monarchy, they had
then recourse to Louis XIV, and tempted him with the offer of the
sovereignty of their city, and the eventual union of their whole island
with the French dominions. Louis eagerly closed with a proposal, which
opened at least an advantageous diversion in his war against Spain. He
was proclaimed king of Sicily at Messina, and immediately despatched a
small squadron to take possession of the city in his name.
[Sidenote: [1674-1679 A.D.]]
The arrival of his force was succeeded, early in the following year, by
that of a formidable French fleet, under the duke de Vivonne; and the
Messinese, being encouraged by these succours, rejected all the Spanish
offers of indemnity and accommodation. On the other hand, the court
of Madrid, being roused to exertion by the danger of losing the whole
island, had fitted out a strong armament to secure its preservation and
the recovery of Messina; and a Dutch fleet under the famous De Ruyter
arrived in the Mediterranean to co-operate with the Spanish forces. The
war in Sicily was prosecuted with fury on both sides for nearly four
years; and several sanguinary battles were fought off the coast, between
the combined fleets and that of France. In all of these the French had
the advantage: in one, the gallant De Ruyter fell; and in another, the
French, under Vivonne and Duquesne, with inferior force, attacked the
Dutch and Spanish squadrons of twenty-seven sail of the line, nineteen
galleys, and several fire-ships at anchor, under the guns of Palermo,
and gained a complete victory. This success placed Messina in security,
and might have enabled both Naples and Sicily to throw off the onerous
dominion of Spain. But the spiritless and subjugated people evinced no
disposition to rise against their oppressors; and all the efforts of the
French eventually failed in extending the authority of their monarch
beyond the walls of Messina.
The French king had lost the hope of possessing himself of all Sicily,
and was already weary of supporting the Messinese, when the conferences
for a general peace were opened at Nimeguen. There, dictating as a
conqueror, he might at least have stipulated for the ancient rights of
the Messinese, and insisted upon an amnesty for the brave citizens, who,
relying on the sacred obligation of protection, had utterly provoked the
vengeance of their Spanish governors by placing themselves under his
sceptre. But, that his pride might not suffer by a formal evacuation of
the city as a condition of the approaching peace, he basely preferred the
gratification of this absurd punctilio to the real preservation of honour
and the common dictates of humanity. His troops were secretly ordered
to abandon Messina before the signature of peace; and so precipitate
was the embarkation that the wretched inhabitants, stricken with sudden
terror at their impending fate, despairing of pardon from their former
governors, and hopeless of successful resistance against them, had only a
few hours to choose between exile and anticipated death. Seven thousand
of them hurried on board the French fleet, without having time to
secure even their money or portable articles, and the French commander,
fearing that his vessels would be overcrowded, sailed from the harbour;
while two thousand more of the fugitives yet remained on the beach with
outstretched arms, in the last agonies of despair, vainly imploring him
with piercing cries not to abandon them to their merciless enemies.
The condition of the Messinese who fled for refuge to France, and of
those who remained in the city, differed little in the event. Louis XIV,
after affording the former an asylum for scarcely more than one short
year, inhumanly chased them in the last stage of destitution from his
dominions. About five hundred of them, rashly venturing to return to
their country, under the faith of Spanish passports, were seized on their
arrival at Messina, and either executed or condemned to the galleys.
Many others, even of the highest rank, were reduced to beg their bread
over Europe, or to congregate in bands, and rob on the highways; and the
miserable remnant, plunged into the abyss of desperation, passed into
Turkey, and fearfully consummated their wretchedness by the renunciation
of their faith. Their brethren, who had not quitted Messina, had
meanwhile at first been deluded with the hope of pardon by the Spanish
viceroy of Sicily. But the amnesty which he published was revoked by
special orders from Madrid; and all, who had been in any way conspicuous
in the insurrection, were either put to death or banished. Messina was
deprived of all its privileges; the town-house was razed to the ground;
and on the spot was erected a galling monument of the degradation of
the city--a pyramid surmounted by the statue of the king of Spain,
cast with the metal of the great bell which had formerly summoned the
people to their free parliaments. The purposes of Spanish tyranny were
accomplished: the population of Messina had dwindled from sixty to
eleven thousand persons; and the obedience of the city was insured by a
desolation from which it has never since risen to its ancient prosperity.
[Sidenote: [1600-1679 A.D.]]
Thus were the annals of Naples and Sicily distinguished only, during the
seventeenth century, by paroxysms of popular suffering. The condition of
central Italy was more obscure and tranquil; for the maladministration
of its rulers did not occasion the same resistance. Yet if the papal
government was less decidedly tyrannical and rapacious than that of
Spain, the evils, which had become inherent in it during preceding ages,
remained undiminished and incurable; and agricultural and commercial
industry was permanently banished from the Roman states. Meanwhile the
succession of the pontiffs was marked by few circumstances to arrest our
attention. To Clement VIII, who reigned at the opening of the century,
succeeded in 1604 Leo XI, of the family of Medici, who survived his
election only a few weeks; and on his death the cardinal Camillo Borghese
was raised to the tiara by the title of Paul V. Filled with extravagant
and exploded opinions of the authority of the holy see, Paul V signalised
the commencement of his pontificate by the impotent attempt to revive
those pretensions of the papal jurisdiction and supremacy over the powers
of the earth, which, in the dark ages, had inundated Italy and the empire
with blood. He thus involved the papacy in disputes with several of the
Catholic governments of Europe, and in a serious difference with Venice
in particular. After his merited defeat on this occasion, he cautiously
avoided to compromise his authority by the repetition of any similar
efforts; and during the remainder of his pontificate of sixteen years,
his only cares were to embellish the ecclesiastical capital, and to
enrich his nephews with vast estates in the Roman patrimony, which thus
became the hereditary possessions of the family of Borghese.
[Illustration: THE RECANTATION OF GALILEO]
Paul V, on his death in 1621, was succeeded by Gregory XV, whose
insignificant pontificate filled only two years; and in 1623 the conclave
placed the cardinal Maffeo Barberini in the chair of St. Peter, under the
name of Urban VIII. This pope, during a reign of twenty-one years, was
wholly under the guidance of his two nephews, the cardinal Antonio and
Taddeo Barberini, prefect of Rome. These ambitious relatives were not
satisfied with the riches which he heaped upon them; and their project of
acquiring for their family the Roman duchies of Castro and Ronciglione,
fiefs held of the church by the house of Farnese, involved the papacy
in a war with Parma. Odoardo Farnese, the reigning duke of Parma, had
contracted immense debts to charitable foundations at Rome, of which he
neglected to pay even the interest. He thus afforded Taddeo Barberini, as
prefect of that capital, a pretext for summoning him before the apostolic
chamber; and on his contemptuous neglect of the citation, the Barberini
obtained an order for sequestrating his Roman fiefs. The duke of Parma
had recourse to arms for his defence; the pope excommunicated him; and
hostilities commenced between him and Taddeo, who acted as general of the
church. But this war of the Barberini, as it has been named, the only
strictly Italian contest of the century, produced no decisive result. It
was invested with a ridiculous character by the cowardice of Taddeo and
the papal troops, who, to the number of eighteen thousand, fled before a
handful of cavalry under the duke Odoardo. After this disgraceful check,
the Barberini were but too happy to obtain a suspension of arms; and the
war was shortly terminated by a treaty, which left the combatants in
their original state (1644).
Urban VIII, or rather his nephews, had thus failed in gaining possession
of the fiefs of Castro and Ronciglione; but the pope had succeeded
some years before in securing to the holy see a much more important
acquisition, which he did not venture to appropriate to his family.
This was the duchy of Urbino, which had remained under the sovereignty
of the family of Rovere since the beginning of the sixteenth century,
when Julius II had induced the last prince of the line of Montefeltro to
adopt his nephew for a successor. The house of Rovere had for 120 years
maintained the intellectual splendour of the little court of Urbino, the
most polished in Italy; but Urban VIII persuaded the aged duke, Francesco
Maria, who had no male heirs, to abdicate his sovereignty in favour of
the church. The duchy of Urbino was annexed to the Roman states; and the
industry and prosperity for which it had been remarkable under its own
princes immediately withered.[c]
GALILEO AND THE CHURCH
[Sidenote: [1610-1632 A.D.]]
During the pontificate of Urban VIII, an interesting controversy between
science and theology reached a culmination in the persecution of Italy’s
most famous scientist of the century, Galileo. This great experimental
philosopher had developed the telescope, and in 1610 made the discovery
of the satellites of Jupiter. This discovery, along with others almost
equally interesting, was announced in Galileo’s _Nuncius Sidereus_,
published at Venice in 1610.[a]
The title of this work will best convey an idea of the claim it made
to public notice: “_The Sidereal Messenger_, announcing great and very
wonderful spectacles, and offering them to the consideration of everyone,
but especially of philosophers and astronomers; which have been observed
by _Galileo Galilei_, etc., by the assistance of a perspective glass
lately invented by him; namely, in the face of the moon, in innumerable
fixed stars in the milky-way, in nebulous stars, but especially in four
planets which revolve round Jupiter at different intervals and periods
with a wonderful celerity; which, hitherto not known to any one, the
author has recently been the first to detect, and has decreed to call the
_Medicean stars_.”
The interest this discovery excited was intense; and men were at
this period so little habituated to accommodate their convictions
on matters of science to newly observed facts that several of “the
paper-philosophers,” as Galileo termed them, appear to have thought they
could get rid of these new objects by writing books against them. The
effect which the discovery had upon the reception of the Copernican
system was immediately very considerable. It showed that the real
universe was very different from that which ancient philosophers had
imagined, and suggested at once the thought that it contained mechanism
more various and more vast than had yet been conjectured. And when the
system of the planet Jupiter thus offered to the bodily eye a model
or image of the solar system according to the views of Copernicus, it
supported the belief of such an arrangement of the planets, by an analogy
all but irresistible.
[Illustration: GALILEO GALILEI]
Later in the same year Galileo observed and reported the phases of the
planet Venus, thus further corroborating the Copernican doctrine. This
doctrine when first promulgated by Copernicus had apparently excited no
very great alarm among the theologians of the time. But its assertion
and confirmation by Galileo now provoked a storm of controversy, and
was visited by severe condemnation. Galileo’s own behaviour appears
to have provoked the interference of the ecclesiastical authorities;
but there must have been a great change in the temper of the times to
make it possible for his adversaries to bring down the sentence of the
Inquisition upon opinions which had been so long current without giving
any serious offence.
The heliocentric doctrine had for a century been making its way into the
minds of thoughtful men, on the general ground of its simplicity and
symmetry. Galileo appears to have thought that now, when these original
recommendations of the system had been reinforced by his own discoveries
and reasonings, it ought to be universally acknowledged as a truth and a
reality. And when arguments against the fixity of the sun and the motion
of the earth were adduced from the expressions of Scripture, he could not
be satisfied without maintaining his favourite opinion to be conformable
to Scripture as well as to philosophy; and he was very eager in his
attempts to obtain from authority a declaration to this effect. The
ecclesiastical authorities were naturally averse to express themselves in
favour of a novel opinion, startling to the common mind, and contrary to
the most obvious meaning of the words of the Bible; and when they were
compelled to pronounce, they decided against Galileo and his doctrines.
He was accused before the Inquisition in 1615; but at that period the
result was that he was merely recommended to confine himself to the
mathematical reasonings upon the system, and to abstain from meddling
with the Scripture. Galileo’s zeal for his opinions soon led him again
to bring the question under the notice of the pope, and the result was a
declaration of the Inquisition that the doctrine of the earth’s motion
appeared to be contrary to the sacred Scripture. Galileo was prohibited
from defending and teaching this doctrine in any manner, and promised
obedience to this injunction. But in 1632 he published his _Dialogo delli
due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo, Tolemaico e Copernicano_;[g] and in this,
he defended the heliocentric system by all the strongest arguments which
its admirers used. Not only so, but he introduced into this _Dialogue_
a character under the name of Simplicius, in whose mouth was put the
defence of all the ancient dogmas, and who was represented as defeated
at all points in the discussion; and he prefixed to the _Dialogue_ a
notice, _To the Discreet Reader_, in which, in a vein of transparent
irony, he assigned his reasons for the publication. “Some years ago,”
he says, “a wholesome edict was promulgated at Rome, which, in order to
check the perilous scandals of the present age, imposed silence upon the
Pythagorean opinion of the motion of the earth. There were not wanting,”
he adds, “persons who rashly asserted that this decree was the result,
not of a judicious inquiry, but of a passion ill-informed; and complaints
were heard that counsellors, utterly unacquainted with astronomical
observations, ought not to be allowed, with their undue prohibitions,
to clip the wings of speculative intellects. At the hearing of rash
lamentations like these, my zeal could not keep silence.” And he then
goes on to say that he wishes, by the publication of his _Dialogue_, to
show that the subject had been fully examined at Rome. The result of
this was that Galileo was condemned for his infraction of the injunction
laid upon him in 1616; his _Dialogue_ was prohibited; he himself was
commanded to abjure on his knees the doctrine which he had taught; and
this abjuration he performed.
The ecclesiastical authorities having once declared the doctrine of the
earth’s motion to be contrary to Scripture and heretical, long adhered in
form to this declaration, and did not allow the Copernican system to be
taught in any other way than as an “hypothesis.”[f]
THE SUCCESSORS OF URBAN VIII
[Sidenote: [1632-1660 A.D.]]
Urban VIII was succeeded in 1644 by Innocent X, who revived with more
success the pretensions of the holy see to the fiefs of Castro and
Ronciglione. The unliquidated debts of the house of Farnese were still
the pretext for the seizure of these possessions; but the papal officers
were expelled from Castro, and the bishop, whom Innocent had installed in
that see, was murdered by order of the minister of Ranuccio II, duke of
Parma. The pope was so highly exasperated by these acts, that he directed
his whole force against Castro; the Parmesan troops were repulsed in
an attempt to succour the place; and when famine had compelled it to
surrender, the pope, confounding the innocent inhabitants with the
perpetrators of the assassination, caused the city to be razed to its
foundations, and a pyramid to be erected on the ruins commemorative of
his vengeance. The restitution of these fiefs to the house of Parma was
made a condition of the peace of the Pyrenees; but Alexander VII, who
succeeded Innocent X in 1656, contrived after many negotiations to obtain
permission to hold them in pledge, until Ranuccio II should discharge
the debts of his crown. By the failure of the duke to satisfy this
engagement, the disputed states remained finally annexed to the popedom.
The pontificate of Alexander VII proved, however, an epoch of grievous
humiliation for the pride of the holy see. In 1660, an affray was
occasioned at Rome through the privileges, arrogantly claimed by the
French ambassadors, of protecting all the quarter of the city near
their residence from the usual operations of justice; and Louis XIV
determined, in the insolence of his power, to support a pretension which
would be intolerable to the meanest court in Europe. He sent the duke
of Créqui as his ambassador to Rome, with a numerous and well-armed
retinue, to brave the pope in his own capital. Créqui took formal
military possession of a certain number of streets near the palace of
his embassy, according to the extent over which the right of asylum had
been permitted by usage to his predecessors. He placed guards throughout
this circuit, as if it had been one of his master’s fortresses; and the
papal government, anxious to avoid a rupture with the haughty monarch of
France, overlooked the usurpation. But every effort to preserve peace
was ineffectual against the resolution which had been taken on the
opposite side to provoke some open quarrel. The duke of Créqui’s people
made it their occupation to outrage the police of Rome, and to insult
the Corsican guard of the pope. Still, even these excesses of the French
were tolerated by Alexander, until they rose to such a height that the
peaceful citizens dared no longer to pass through the streets by night.
At length the Corsican guards were goaded into a fray with the followers
of the embassy, which brought matters to the crisis desired by Louis.
While the Corsicans were violently irritated by the death of one of their
comrades in the broil, they happened to meet the carriage of the duchess
of Créqui; they fired upon and killed two of her attendants, and the duke
immediately quitted Rome, as if his master had received in his person an
unprovoked and mortal affront.
[Illustration: COSTUME WORN BY THE MEMBER OF THE BROTHERHOOD WHO
ACCOMPANIED THE CONDEMNED TO THE SCAFFOLD, VENICE]
[Sidenote: [1660-1664 A.D.]]
Alexander VII soon found that Louis XIV was resolved to avail himself of
the most serious colouring which could be given to this affair. The king
expelled the pope’s nuncio from France; he seized upon Avignon and its
papal dependencies; and he assembled an army in Provence, which crossed
the Alps to take satisfaction in Rome itself. The pope at first showed
an inclination to assert the common rights of every crown with becoming
spirit; and he endeavoured to engage several Catholic princes to protect
the dignity of the holy see. But none of the great powers were in a
condition at that juncture to undertake his defence. His own temporal
strength was quite unequal to a struggle with France; the spiritual
arms of the Vatican had now fallen into contempt; and he had the bitter
mortification of being obliged to submit to the terms of accommodation
which Louis XIV imperiously dictated. The principal of these were the
banishment of all the persons who had taken a part in the insult offered
to the train of the French ambassador; the suppression of the Corsican
guard; the erection of a column, even in Rome, with a legend to proclaim
the injury and its reparation: and, finally, the mission of one of the
pope’s own family to Paris to make his apologies. All these humiliating
conditions were subscribed to, and rigorously enforced. Cardinal Chigi,
the nephew of Alexander VII, was the first ecclesiastic despatched to any
monarch, to demand pardon for the holy see.
[Sidenote: [1600-1700 A.D.]]
Alexander VII did not survive this memorable epoch of degradation for the
papacy above three years. He was succeeded in 1667 by Clement IX, who
wore the triple crown over two years, and was replaced in 1670 by Clement
X. The unimportant reign of this pope occupied seven years, and closed in
1676. The pontificate of his successor, Innocent XI, was more remarkable
for the renewal of the quarrel respecting the privileges of the French
embassy. To terminate the flagrant abuses which these privileges
engendered, Innocent published a decree that no foreign minister should
thenceforth be accredited at the papal court, until he had expressly
renounced every pretension of the kind. This reasonable provision was
admitted without opposition by all the Catholic monarchs, except Louis
XIV: but he alone refused to recognise its justice; and on the death
of the duke d’Estrées, his ambassador at Rome, he sent the marquis de
Lavardin to succeed him, and to enforce the maintenance of the old
privileges. For this purpose, Lavardin was attended by a body of eight
hundred armed men; and the sovereignty of the pope was again insolently
braved in his own capital. The guards of Lavardin violently excluded
the papal police from all access to the quarter of the city which they
occupied; and Innocent at length excommunicated the ambassador. This
proceeding would at Paris have excited only ridicule; but in Rome the
outraged pride of the court, and the prejudices which still enveloped the
ancient throne of papal supremacy and superstition, excluded Lavardin
from the pale of society; and he found the solitude in which he was left
so irksome that he at last petitioned to be recalled.
The pontificate of Innocent XI terminated in 1689; and it was not until
three years after his death that Louis XIV was at length persuaded to
desist from the assertion of a pretended right, which could have no other
object than to gratify his pride at the expense of multiplying crime and
anarchy, in the chosen seat of the religion which he professed. This
was the last event in the papal annals of the seventeenth century which
deserves to be recorded. We have already found the reigns of several of
the popes entirely barren of circumstance; and after that of Innocent XI,
we should be altogether at a loss how to bestow a single comment upon the
obscure pontificates of his next three successors: of Alexander VIII, who
died in 1691; of Innocent XII; and of Clement XI, who was placed in the
chair of St. Peter in the last year of the century.
The two contests with the popedom, which the house of Farnese maintained
for the possession of the fiefs of Castro and Ronciglione, were almost
the only remarkable circumstances in the annals of the duchy of Parma
during this century. Ranuccio I, the son of the hero Alessandro Farnese,
who wore the ducal crown at its commencement, resembled his father in
no quality but mere courage. His long reign was distinguished only for
its habitual tyranny and avarice; and for the wanton cruelty with which
he caused a great number of his nobility and other subjects to be put
to death in 1612, that he might confiscate their property under the
charge of a conspiracy, which appears to have had no real existence. He
was succeeded in 1622 by his son, Odoard, whose misplaced confidence
in his military talents plunged his subjects into many calamities.
Vainly imagining that the martial virtues of his grandfather Alessandro
were hereditary in his person, he eagerly sought occasion of entering
on a career of activity and distinction in the field, for which his
egotistical presumption and his excessive corpulence equally disqualified
him. By engaging, in 1635, in the war between France and Spain in
northern Italy, as the ally of the former power, he exposed his states
to cruel ravages; and though, in the subsequent war of the Barberini he
was indebted to the misconduct of the papal army for the preservation
of his fiefs, that contest did not terminate until he had consumed the
resources of his duchy by his prodigality and ignorance.
The death of Odoard, in 1646, relieved his subjects from the apprehension
of a continuance of similar evils from his restless temper; and the mild
and indolent character of his son Ranuccio II seemed to promise an era
of greater tranquillity. But Ranuccio was always governed by unworthy
favourites, who oppressed his people; and it was one of these ministers,
whose violence, as we have seen, provoked the destruction of Castro, and
entailed the loss of its dependencies on the duchy of Parma. The long
and feeble reign of Ranuccio II, thus marked only by disgrace, was a
fitting prelude to the extinction of the sovereignty and existence of
the house of Farnese. Buried in slothful indulgence and lethargy, the
members of the ducal family were oppressed with hereditary obesity, which
shortened their lives. Ranuccio II himself survived to the year 1694;
but he might already anticipate the approaching failure of the male line
of his dynasty. Odoard, the eldest of his sons, had died before him of
suffocation, the consequence of corpulence; the two others, Don Francesco
and Don Vincente, who were destined successively to ascend the throne
after him, resembled their brother in their diseased constitutions; and
the probability that these princes would die without issue rendered
their niece, Elizabeth (Elisabetta) Farnese, daughter of Odoard, sole
presumptive heiress of the states of her family.
LESSER PRINCIPALITIES
Of the dukes of Parma, whose reigns filled the seventeenth century, not
one deserved either the love of his people or the respect of posterity.
The contemporary annals of the princes of Este were graced by more
ability and virtue. But the reduction of the dominion of those sovereigns
to the narrow limits of the duchies of Modena and Reggio diminished
the consequence which their ancestors had enjoyed in Italy during the
preceding century, before the seizure of Ferrara by the Roman see. Don
Cesare of Este, whose weakness had submitted to this spoliation, reigned
until the year 1628. His subjects of Modena forgave him a pusillanimity
which had rendered their city the elegant seat of his beneficent reign.
His son, Alfonso III, who succeeded him, was stricken with such wondrous
affliction for the death of his wife, only a few months after his
accession to the ducal crown, that he abdicated his throne, and retired
into a Capuchin convent in the Tyrol. On this event, his son Francesco
I assumed his sceptre in 1629, and reigned nearly thirty years. Joining
in the wars of the times in upper Italy between France and Spain, and
alternately espousing their opposite causes, Francesco I acquired the
reputation of one of the ablest captains of his age, as he was also
one of the best sovereigns. His skilful conduct and policy in these
unimportant contests were rewarded by the extension of his territories;
and in 1636, the little principality of Correggio (more famous in the
annals of art than of war) was annexed to his imperial fiefs. Neither the
short reign of his son and successor, Alfonso IV, which commenced in 1658
and ended in 1662, nor that of his grandson, Francesco II, which began
with a feeble minority and terminated after a protracted administration
of the same character, demand our particular notice; and in 1694, the
cardinal Rinaldo, son of the first Francesco, succeeded his nephew, and
entered upon a reign which was reserved for signal calamities in the
first years of the new century.
In the affairs of Parma and Modena, during the century before us, there
is scarcely anything to invite our attention; but the fortunes of Mantua,
so obscure in the preceding age, were rendered somewhat remarkable
in this by the wars which the disputed succession to its sovereignty
occasioned. The reign of Vincente I, who, having succeeded to the ducal
crowns of Mantua and Montferrat in 1587, still wore them at the opening
of the seventeenth century, and that of his successor Francesco IV,
were equally obscure and unimportant. But, on the death of Francesco,
in 1612, some troubles arose, from the pretensions which the duke of
Savoy advanced anew over the state of Montferrat. It was not until after
several years that negotiations terminated the indecisive hostilities
which were thus occasioned, and in which Spain interfered directly
against the duke of Savoy, while France more indirectly assisted him.
By the Treaty of Asti in 1615, and of Madrid in 1617, the duke of Savoy
engaged to leave Montferrat to the house of Gonzaga, until the emperor
should decide on his claims. The last duke of Mantua, Francesco IV,
had left only a daughter: but as Montferrat was a feminine fief, that
state descended to her; while her father’s two brothers, Ferdinando and
Vincente II, reigned successively over Mantua without leaving issue. On
the death of the latter of these two princes, both of whom shortened
their days by their infamous debaucheries, the direct male line of the
ducal house of Gonzaga became extinct; and the right of succession to the
Mantua duchy devolved on a collateral branch, descended from a younger
son of the duke Federigo II, who had died in 1540. This part of the
family of Gonzaga was established in France, in possession of the first
honours of nobility, and was now represented by Charles, duke de Nevers.
By sending his son, the duke of Rethel, to Mantua in the last illness of
Vincente II, Charles not only secured the succession to that duchy, which
he might lawfully claim, but reannexed Montferrat to its diadem. For,
on the very same night on which Vincente II expired, the duke of Rethel
received the hand of Maria, the daughter of Francesco IV, and heiress of
Montferrat; and the right of inheritance to all the states of the ducal
line thus centred in the branch of Nevers.
[Sidenote: [1630-1680 A.D.]]
The new ducal house of Gonzaga did not commence its sovereignty over
Mantua and Montferrat without violent opposition. The duke of Savoy
renewed his claim upon the latter province; and Cesare Gonzaga, duke
of Guastalla, the representative of a distant branch of that family,
made pretensions to the duchy of Mantua. At the same time the Spanish
government thought to take advantage of a disputed succession, for the
purpose of annexing the Mantuan to the Milanese states; and the emperor
Ferdinand II placed the duke of Nevers under the ban of the empire for
having taken possession of its dependent fiefs without waiting for a
formal investiture at its hands. The objects of Ferdinand were evidently
to revive the imperial jurisdiction in Italy, and to enrich the Spanish
dynasty of his family by the acquisition of these states. To promote
these combined plans of the house of Austria an imperial army crossed the
Alps, and surprised the city of Mantua, which was sacked with merciless
ferocity (1630). At the same time the duke of Savoy concluded a treaty
with Spain, for the partition of Montferrat; and the new duke of Mantua
seemed likely to be dispossessed of the whole of his dominions. But
fortunately for him, it was at this juncture that Cardinal Richelieu had
entered on his famous design of humbling the power and ambition of both
the Spanish and German dynasties of the house of Austria; and a French
army, under Louis XIII in person, forcing the pass at Susa, crossed the
Alps to support the Gonzagas of Nevers against all their enemies. We pass
over the uninteresting details of the general war, which was thus kindled
in northern Italy by the Mantuan succession. When Richelieu himself
appeared on the theatre of contest, at the head of a formidable French
army, all resistance was hopeless; and his success shortly produced an
accommodation between the belligerents in the peninsula, by which the
emperor was compelled, in the settlement of the matter, to bestow the
disputed investiture of Mantua and Montferrat upon Charles of Nevers
(1631).
[Illustration: THE OLD LIGHTHOUSE, GENOA]
This prince, who thenceforth reigned at Mantua under the title of Carlo
I, retained that duchy without further opposition. But in 1635 he was
drawn, by the memory of the eminent services which France had rendered
him, into an alliance with that power against Spain, in the new war which
broke out between the rival dynasties of Bourbon and Austria. Such a
connection could serve, however, only to destroy the repose and endanger
the safety of his duchies. Neither Carlo I nor his son Carlo II, who
succeeded him in 1637, could prevent Montferrat from being perpetually
overrun and ravaged by the contending armies of France, Spain, the
empire, and Savoy; and the Mantuan dukes abandoned almost every effort
to retain the possession of that province until, after being for above
twenty years the seat of warfare and desolation, it was at length
restored to Carlo II by the general Peace of the Pyrenees.
Carlo II died in 1665; and his son Ferdinando Carlo commenced the long
and disgraceful reign with which the sovereignty and race of the Gonzagas
were to terminate early in the next century. This prince, more dissolute,
more insensible of dishonour, more deeply buried in grovelling vice than
almost any of his predecessors, was worthy of being the last of a family
which, since its elevation to the tyranny of Mantua, had, during four
centuries of sovereignty, relieved its career of blood and debauchery by
few examples of true greatness and virtue. To gratify his extravagance,
and indulge in his low and vicious excesses, Ferdinando Carlo crushed
his people under grievous taxation. To raise fresh supplies, which
his exhausted states could no longer afford, he shamelessly in 1680
sold Casale, the capital of Montferrat, to Louis XIV, who immediately
occupied the place with twelve thousand men under his general Catinat.
The sums which the duke thus raised, either by extortion from his
oppressed subjects or from this disgraceful transaction, were dissipated
in abandoned pleasures in the carnivals of Venice, among a people who
openly evinced their contempt for him, and whose sovereign oligarchy
passed a decree forbidding any of their noble body from mingling in his
society.
TUSCANY
[Sidenote: [1600-1670 A.D.]]
From the affairs of Mantua, we may pass to those of Tuscany; but the
transition is attended with little augmentation of interest. A common
dearth of attraction marks the annals of most of the despotisms of Italy;
and when Tuscany descended to the rank of a duchy, her pre-eminence of
splendour survived only in the past, and her modern story sank into
the same ignominious obscurity with that of Parma, and Modena, and
Mantua. We are reminded only of the existence of the solitary republic
which survived in this quarter of Italy, to wonder how Lucca escaped
subjugation to the power whose dominions encircled and hemmed in her
narrow territory; and we are permitted to contemplate her ancient
republican rivals, Florence, Siena, and Pisa, only as the capital and
the provincial cities of the ducal sovereigns of Tuscany. Of these
princes of the house of Medici, four reigned successively during the
seventeenth century. At its commencement, the ducal crown was worn by
Ferdinand I, whose personal vices and political talents have been already
noticed. After the failure of his project to throw off the Spanish yoke,
his efforts were exclusively devoted to the encouragement of commerce
and maritime industry among his subjects; and the enlightened measures
to which he was prompted by a thorough knowledge of the science of
government, and a keen perception of his own interests, were rewarded
with signal success. To attract the trade of the Mediterranean to the
shores of Tuscany, he made choice of the castle of Livorno (Leghorn)
for the seat of a free port. He improved the natural advantages of
its harbour, which had already excited the attention of some of his
predecessors, by several grand and useful works; he invested the
town which rose on the site with liberal privileges; and from this
epoch, Livorno continued to flourish, until it attained the mercantile
prosperity and opulence which have rendered it one of the first maritime
cities of the peninsula. The skilful policy which Ferdinand I pursued
in this and other respects produced a rapid influx of wealth into his
states; and before his death, which occurred in 1609, he had amassed
immense treasures.
Several of the first princes of the ducal house of Medici seemed to have
inherited some portion of that commercial ability by which their merchant
ancestors had founded the grandeur of their house; and they profited by
the contempt or ignorance which precluded other Italian princes from
rivalling them in the cultivation of the same pursuits. Cosmo II, the son
and successor of Ferdinand, imitated his example with even more earnest
zeal, and with more brilliant success. But on his death, in 1621, the
minority of his son Ferdinand II destroyed the transient prosperity of
the ducal government. The rich treasury of the two preceding dukes was
drained in furnishing troops and subsidies to Spain and Austria; and
Ferdinand, who was left under the guardianship of his grandmother and
mother, was only released from female tutelage on attaining the age of
manhood, to exhibit during his long reign all the enfeebling consequences
of such an education. His character was mild, peaceable, and benevolent;
and his administration responded to his personal qualities. From this
epoch, the political importance of Tuscany entirely ceased; the state was
stricken with moral paralysis; and lethargy and indolence became the
only characteristics of the government and the people.
Ferdinand II, however, was not destitute of talents; and the enthusiasm
with which the grand-duke and his brother promoted the cultivation of
science at least protected his inactive reign from the reproach of utter
insignificance. But his son, Cosmo III, who ascended his throne in 1670,
reigned with a weakness which was relieved by no intellectual tastes.
Unhappy and suspicious in his temper, his life was embittered by domestic
disagreements with his duchess; fanatical and bigoted, he was constantly
surrounded and governed by monks; and at the close of the seventeenth
century, Florence, once the throne of literature, the fair and splendid
seat of all the arts which can embellish and illumine life, was converted
into the temple of gloomy superstition and hypocrisy.
PIEDMONT AND SAVOY
[Sidenote: [1027-1700 A.D.]]
While the other ducal thrones of Italy were thus for the most part
filled only by slothful voluptuaries, that of Savoy seemed reserved
for a succession of sovereigns, whose fearless activity and political
talents constantly placed their characters in brilliant contrast with
the indolence and imbecility of their despicable contemporaries.[c] The
history of this house shows in a striking manner how the destinies of
a nation may depend on the fortunes of a princely family. During eight
centuries the princes of Savoy have, in the words of Charles Emmanuel
III, “treated Italy as an artichoke to be eaten leaf by leaf.” Their work
is now perfected in the freedom of the state.
The descent of Humbert the Whitehanded, the founder of the family, is
uncertain, but he was probably a son of Amadeus, the great-grandson
of Boson of Provence. In reward for services rendered to Rudolf III
of Arles, Humbert obtained from him in 1027 the counties of Savoy and
Maurienne, and from the emperor Conrad the Salic, Chablais, and the
lower Valais. On his death in 1048 he was succeeded perhaps by his
eldest son, Amadeus I, but eventually by his fourth son, Otho, who, by
his marriage with Adelaide of Susa, obtained the counties of Turin and
the Val d’Aosta, and so acquired a footing in the valley of the Po. Otho
was succeeded in 1060 by his son Amadeus II, who maintained a judicious
neutrality between his brother-in-law, the emperor Henry IV, and the
pope. In reward for his mediation he obtained from the former, after
Canossa, the province of Bugey. The accession of his son Humbert II in
1080 brought fresh increase of territory in the valley of the Tarantaise,
and in 1091 this prince succeeded to the dignities of his grandmother,
Adelaide. Amadeus III came to the throne in 1103, and in 1111 his states
were created counties of the empire by Henry V. On his way home from the
crusades in 1149 Amadeus died at Nicosia, and was succeeded by his son
Humbert III. The prince took the part of the pope against Barbarossa, who
ravaged his territories until Humbert’s death in 1188. The guardians of
his son Thomas reconciled their ward and the emperor. He received from
Henry VI accessions of territory in Vaud, Bugey, and Valais, with the
title of imperial vicar in Piedmont and Lombardy. He was followed in 1233
by Amadeus IV. A campaign against the inhabitants of Valais ended in the
annexation of their district, and his support of Frederick II against the
pope caused the erection of Chablais and Aosta into a duchy.
[Sidenote: [1253-1482 A.D.]]
In 1253 his son Boniface succeeded to his states at the age of nine, but
after giving proofs of his valour by defeating the troops of Charles of
Anjou before Turin, he was taken prisoner and died of grief (1263).
The Salic law now came into operation for the first time, and Peter,
the uncle of Boniface, was called to the throne. This prince, on the
marriage of his nieces, Eleanor and Sancha of Provence, with Henry III
of England and Richard, earl of Cornwall, had visited England, where
he had been created earl of Richmond, and built a palace in London,
afterwards called Savoy House. In return he recognised the claims of
Richard to the imperial throne, and received from him Kyburg, in the
diocese of Lausanne. At his death in 1268 he was succeeded by his brother
Philip I, who died in 1285, when their nephew Amadeus V came to the
throne. This prince, surnamed the Great, united Baugé and Bresse to his
states in right of his wife Sibylla, and later on lower Faucigny and
part of Geneva. For his second wife he married Mary of Brabant, sister
of the emperor Henry VII, from whom he received the seigniory of Aosta.
His life was passed in continual and victorious warfare, and one of
his last exploits was to force the Turks to raise the siege of Rhodes.
He died in 1323. His son Edward succeeded him, and dying in 1329, was
followed by his brother Aymon. This prince died in 1343, when his son
Amadeus VI ascended the throne. His reign was, like his grandfather’s,
a series of petty wars, from which he came out victorious and with
extended territory, until he died of the plague (1383). The promising
reign of his son Amadeus VII was cut short by a fall from his horse
in 1391. Before his death, however, he had received the allegiance of
Barcelonnette, Ventimiglia, Villafranca, and Nice, so gaining access to
the Mediterranean.